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This morning I was at my computer by 7:00 getting caught up on work after being behind from my travels. I then prepared for recording a video on my thoughts on generosity (which the Community of Christ asked me to do). After that, I went on a run with Basil and Mary, which was the highlight of my whole day. She really wants to be a runner and she did such a good job. She was sweet to take in my tips and tricks which were so fun to share!

While I was running with Mary, Lily was getting the rest of the kids ready for their ballroom dance competition. I got myself ready and then pitched into help, but Lily, who did the lion-share, was seriously stressed out. Also, I was confused about the time we needed to be there and that didn’t help the situation. I tried to take the kids myself with the idea of giving her some time away from the chaos, and even stay home to take a break, but I forgot some dresses, so she had to drive out to Taylorsville to meet me and was not happy at all about how the whole morning had gone, which was totally understandable, especially given the fact she just did almost an entire week on her own while I was traveling. That started off what became a very rough day emotionally for both me and Lily.

I made a big deal about being two hours early because the sheet said we needed to be and Lydia said they practice before-hand. Turns out, we mostly just sat around for two hours, and being that early seemed completely unnecessary. At any rate, Ammon got to pal around with some of his dancing buddies.

The performances were so fun to watch. Clarissa got a pair of clip-on earrings and went absolutely nuts. In the below performance, she spots me in the audience, and then points to her earrings that she is so excited about.

Before Clarissa’s second performance, she kept pointing to her earrings from side stage as she waited for her performance to start. She was so excited about them. And then, as you can see in the below video, as the show ended, Clarissa, instead of exiting with everyone else on her dance team, walked towards the front of the stage pointing to her earrings and swishing her dress with her hands. It reminded Lily and I of her James and the Giant Peach performance when she walked to the front of the stage at the end, when she was supposed to exit the stage with the rest of her group. Lily and I laughed so hard, and it was such a nice moment to share together as we having a rocky day together.

All the kids did so great, and here is Lydia in her dances below!

After the ballroom dance competition, Lily took the kids home and watched the second Grindlewald movie with them. I drove to the Community of Christ building in Salt Lake and recorded my generosity video and helped them set up tables, chairs and decorations for Easter.

At home I finished watching the movie with everyone and then bought tickets so we could all go watch the Grindlewald movie. Lily suggested we get a sitter for Clarissa. I thought we would be fine. We were not fine. Clarissa and Ammon were both wiggly and difficult, so I took them out of the theater to drive them home, trying to figure out the best way to get Lily home when the movie was over. Then we saw our neighbors Todd and Mikayla, who were able to drive us home, so Lily could have the car. What a gift!

I put the small kids down, had a late dinner, and cleaned poop from the backyard, and then when the rest of the group came home, I helped Lydia and Mary set everything up for Easter. They were such great helpers!

Today Ammon and Clarissa made an art store!

I also got home from my Raleigh trip. It is so nice to be home after all my travel!

Today was extremely busy for me. I woke up at 6 (4 Utah time) to get a quick workout and then I had an internal meeting and made it to the partner conference by 8. It was 8 hours of meetings and networking until it was time for shooting which was our team activity. Tim and Ed had never shot before. It is very rare for me to do, and 3 others were seasoned shooters. We all had a really good time. It was definitely an experience!

We also went to Death and Taxes which was a delicious restaurant. We had a great time chatting. I love my team!

I barely connected with Lily today so I’m about to call her now so apologies for not providing updates on her end!

Today I woke up early, took the luggage rack of the Highlander, unpacked my suitcase, then repacked my suitcase and then headed to the airport for my trip to Raleigh for our partner conference and QBR.

On the plane I almost finished reading “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” which was awesome and all about how to create trust on a team and focus people on results (getting buy in by fostering debate and getting people’s opinions before setting a course), and then not only holding people accountable, but fostering a culture where people hold each other accountable. It gave me so many ideas about leadership.

When my plane landed, I saw that Lily had sent a text message about an earthquake. It totally freaked her out and Basil went nuts and barked up a storm. Lily heard a loud noise and the house shook hard. Then it happened 2-3 more times but with decreased intensity. Lily was so scared and called the city, but they didn’t know what it was. Lily knew she wasn’t making it up because on our Ring-doorbell feed, other people reported feeling it too. I also found it reported later on this website. Lily was so rattled. Her anxiety was already very high and the earthquake sent her over the edge. She called me scared and rattled. Still, she pulled it together and had a very productive day, did music practice with the kids, and got the kids to bed at a good time. The weather was also crazy. It was cold and windy so Lily took a warm bath to warm up. It was just a hard day for her, and I felt sorry for her, but we did have a nice long chat before we both went to bed, which was really nice.

On my end, I got dinner at a Thai place with colleagues (Max Bastian, David Lee, Derek Tuimauga) and also worked back at the hotel. I went to bed early so I could wake up at 6 (4 Utah time).

Also, it appears this is something Lydia made in school that Lily took pictures of today and our fruit trees are blooming which makes me super excited.

Today we were out the door around 6 for our long drive from Tacoma to Orem. Lily wanted to do the first leg, and then give me the second leg of the trip. I have to say, Lily got the hardest part, and navigated it perfectly. And what was the hardest part? Within an hour of leaving, we hit a snow storm going through the mountains on I-90. At one point we saw a sign that said, “all vehicles chain”. We were already most the way up the mountain and we didn’t have chains and the snow was sticking to the ground. We didn’t feel we had much of a choice, so Lily just drove very very slowly, and very very cautiously, and we made it over the summit and down the other side without incident. I was so relieved! I can’t believe I was thinking we could have drove to Seattle in the winter! It’s a good thing Lily talked us out of it!

Once we were out of the snow storm, we stopped in Yakima for breakfast. Yakima had a sign saying it was the Palm Springs of Washington which cracked us up as we drove around it just because we didn’t know what about the town would make it comparable to Palm Springs. I told Lily that being like Palm Springs was an important communal illusion for the community to live under to give their lives meaning and purpose. This was a joke that was referencing the mind-blowing audio book we were listening to by Earnest Becker called, “The Fear of Death.” Lily chose it. She is my conduit to so much knowledge. The book blew my mind (especially since Becker wrote it while dying of cancer and it won the Pulitzer prize) and took the perspective that everyone is clinging to illusions (I prefer the word constructs) such as religion, social structures, routines, hobbies, beliefs etc, which are all fictional, but that are nevertheless necessary for functioning well. The person who spends too much time thinking about life’s absurdity and chaos, who is not propped up by illusions, might be closer to the truth than others, but is also unable to function well. So the neurotics in our society are those unable to properly adopt illusion (which is happening at an increasing rate due to the decline of religious fervor) or process the reality of absurdity through artistic expression, and healthy people are those able to buy into illusion, especially those reinforced by the community and/or able to process the reality of absurdity through artistic expression. As illusions are a necessary part of functional living, the question then becomes which illusions to adopt, and Becker submits that illusions should be judged on how much freedom, dignity and hope they afford. I prefer the word constructs to illusions because I think a real debate could be made on what is real (I’m not certain meaningless chaos is the only one sure reality), and why constructs, even if we create them, become real etc, but the underlying insight in his book is incredibly thought provoking. I’m unnerved by the idea that literally everything in my life that gives me stability is an illusion. But I’m comforted to know that even if that is true, a key to happiness is leaning into healthy illusions and/or engaging with the possibility of entropy, but processing it through artistic expression to help you cope with it and put your human meaning-making touch on it. Anyway, I LOVE sociology which is why I chose it as my minor in college and the book really got my wheels spinning. I also do personally believe in God (based on specific occurrences in my life I take as evidence that I feel can be explained in no other way), but even if their is a God, I believe They are so mysterious that They can only be understood in metaphor and illusion, so most of Becker’s theories would still hold, with the exception that with a loving God in place, hope would be there without us needing to create it. But either way we can create hope through illusion and artistic expression (to process the reality of absurdity when we do dive into it), and thus live happy lives.

In Yakima, we ate breakfast. While waiting for the food, I interviewed the kids about their reaction to the snow storm as well as their favorite part of the trip.

Lily drove 9 hours and then I took the wheel and got us home. We got in around 11:00. On the drive home, Lydia spent almost an hour entertaining her siblings. It was such a delight to listen to. Here is a sound recording:

In the morning I drove to Seattle to spend time with my Friend, Lesi, his wife Zoe, his two kids Ethan and Chloe and his mother. Amazingly, traffic was perfect. Lesi cooked me a great breakfast sandwich and we talked about work, life, family, kids etc. Lesi is still working hard and with abnormal hours due to working with a Chinese company (that’s in a different time zone). Chloe taught me all about mallard duck from a school project she created (including a 3-dimensional duck she crafted). Ethan was equally adorable. It was also really nice to chat with Zoe and Lesi’s mom.

After a super pleasant visit, I went back to Clark and Swathi’s where I found Sruthi, Swathi’s sister and her new (to us) dog Cocoa. Cocoa is a pit bull mixed with something big (great dane?) and is a gorgeous dog that everybody loved. It was great to spend time with Sruthi (she is one of the few people I know who reads more than Lily)

A little after I arrived home, I took the kids to the park with Sruthi. It was cold and soon at least one kid had to pee, so we went back home (just across the street) and had a playdough party! The kids made different food items and then I sold them the item from a store while I talked in a funny voice and cracked jokes. It was a really good time.

After the playdough party, I put the kids on a TV show.

Then I joined Lily who was visiting with our good friend Julie Grant. Wes, her husband, recently quit Amazon to fulfill his dream of building homes and now they are under contract to sell their home (which they put a lot of work into). Julie is full of positive energy and very fun to talk to.

After our visit, I played, “the floor is lava” with the kids and then we put them all to bed and Lily and I packed for the road trip the next day.

What a good trip we have had!

We woke up early and got out the door with Lydia, Mary, Soren and Clarissa. Joanna stayed home to watch Ammon and Meera to simplify things and so we didn’t need to take two cars. First we went to Deception Pass in Washington, drove over the iconic bridge and went to the West Beach (I think it was West Beach) Amphitheater where there was a beach the kids played at.

They all found rocks they loved.

After our brief stint at Deception Pass, we went to Tulip Town. Lily met up with her friend Amy there so they walked around together while I went around with the kids. Lily said she and Amy connect really well and she had a great time chatting about Fascism, Canada (as in move there if the US becomes fascist) and other topics.

I rode the trolley with the kids and then walked around the tulips with them. There was a sign saying most all of their tulip crop died because of flooding last year, which is really sad, but it was still really fun to walk around.

People had blue lips because of the blue popcorn they ate. I made the dad joke that their two lips are blue lips.

After walking around I ate with the kids. They happily talked for about an hour at this table. Then Soren impressed us by playing a boy much bigger than him in connect 4 (a giant game almost as tall as Soren) and beating him.

When we got back to the house, we heard that Ammon and Meera played so happily together all day. The also got to watch some movies since Friday is Meera’s TV day.

Here is more Foosball action!

We had such a great time today with Clark, Swathi and their kids Soren annd Meera. Clark and Swathi left in the early afternoon to catch a flight for their wedding. But before they left, we chatted with them, I worked out with Clark, and we ate and admired the bread and potato leak soup that Clark made. We also were grateful for Joanna who helps them around the house and helped take care of the kids as well (enabling me to nap in the afternoon).

The kids had so much fun at the Foosball table!

They also had so much fun playing, “the floor is lava!”

After a pasta dinner (already prepared for us, thank you!), we went to Bliss ice-cream. It was incredibly tasty.

Today we left by around 7:00 from Jere’s place in San Francisco. It was so nice of him to host us, and we so enjoyed staying with him! He’s still working for Dexterity doing exciting things with robots.

We were driving all the way to Tacoma which is a 12.5 hour drive. Lily was an absolute warrior. She drank two coffees and then drove for 10.5 hours!! She was on such a role and just didn’t want to stop. She didn’t even want to stop for lunch (which we didn’t), but I went with it because of the incredible time and effort she was making to get us to Portland. Lily said it really helped that we had an awesome book to listen to which was Where Did You Go Bernadette. It was an outstanding book, and very gripping. We finished the book before the night was over.

We did stop for food in Portland. We went to a Lebanese place which was disappointing (Nicholas), but we had great ice-cream afterwards and a trip to Powell’s books. I read to Ammon and Clarissa (and played an eye-spy Dark Crystal book with them) while Lily and the girls browsed for and bought books. Lily especially is in love with that store and cherished her time there. She loves how curated the book suggestions are and also felt happy that every shelf of staff picks had at least one book on it she had already read. She’s such a reader!

After Powell’s I took the wheel and drove to Tacoma where we put our kids to bed and hung out with Clark and Swathi until it was past midnight. It was so fun talking to them!

Today, we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and headed North to Point Reyes National Seashore. On the way, we read about the Golden Gate Bridge and learned its construction was controversial and many groups were against it.

The drive to Point Reyes National Sea Shore was so pretty.

Once we arrived at the Point Reyes visitors center, we watched a very interesting movie about the area and then ate a togo lunch we purchased at a picnic table.

Then we did the most wonderful nature trail. What made it so great was there was a booklet that taught us things at different places along the trail. Lily read the information to us and it made the whole hike so interesting. It was one mile which was perfect given our time constraints.

These Bay Laurel trees bend and bend and bend to get to where the sunlight is.

We then drove to the lightouse, but we didn’t walk to it because we were very short on time. Our parking reservation was 4:30 – 5:00 and we were meeting Liem there. Still, the drive there was gorgeous and we walked to an overlook and had an incredible view of the ocean and surrounding landscape. We weren’t feeling too bad about not doing the longer walk to the lighthouse because Clarissa was asleep and it was so cold and windy! Also, the views we did see were amazing!

After seeing the view near the lighthouse, we drove to Muir Woods. Again, the drive was gorgeous (including this awesome tree-flanked road below), but it was also so winding. Mary got so car-sick, but fortunately she didn’t throw up.

It was so fun to meet Liem and Luan at Muir woods. It was great catching up on each other’s lives. We also were so happy with the weather and the fact that we had the park almost to ourselves because it was late in the day on a weekday. By the end, I think we were the only ones in the park.

We then went home and got some much needed rest after our big day!